On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 09:14:42 +0200, in a place far, far away, "Ool"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 02:40:59 +0200, in a place far, far away, "Ool"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

There's always the chance that the first SPS will be in GEO over
China...

That seems extremely unlikely, barring some radical change there. SPS
won't be built with conventional technology, which is all the Chinese
are pursuing.


You mean the same conventional technology as the Soyuz spacecraft, be-
ing the only means of supplying ISS for the moment?

Yes. No SPS will be built that way.

You mean conven-
tional technology unlike the oh-so-high-tech Space Shuttle, two of
which disintegrated, killing those on board, and the rest of which are
grounded today?

No, that's conventional technology as well, and also not the road to
SPS.

As for the Chinese not being able to produce unconventional technolo-
gy--they produce more scientific papers today than Americans do, so
scoffing at them might be as misguided as scoffing at the Japanese was
in the Seventies or at the Russians in the Fifties...

I'll stop scoffing at them when they start to show a little
imagination in their space activities, instead of simply copying
failed approaches.